


Born For Adversity

by Verecunda



Category: Arthurian Mythology
Genre: Angst, Early Medieval Setting, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Dynamics, Gen, Period-Typical Sexism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-06-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:35:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24826924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verecunda/pseuds/Verecunda
Summary: Gwenhwyvar and Launcelot are fled, Gaheris and Gareth are slain, and Arthur's court is in turmoil. But Cai's first concern is for his brother.
Comments: 14
Kudos: 12





	Born For Adversity

**Author's Note:**

> Reading _The Sword in the Stone_ and _Sword at Sunset_ in short order reminded me of my soft spot for Kay/Cei, though in the latter I found myself rather missing the traditional foster-brother dynamic between him and Artos. I also ended up thinking about how (at least in my experience) Kay naturally figures in the early part of many Arthurian retellings, but he’s pretty absent from most depictions of Arthur’s later reign. Somehow this was the end result of all that.
> 
> Rating is mostly for language, because Cai has no filter. :P

“Hell and furies!”

With that, and with other like imprecations, Cai descended on the two brawling youths. Unmindful of the wildly flailing fists, he thrust his way between the combatants, hauled them apart by the hair, and knocked their heads together hard. The resulting crack was drowned out by a pair of anguished howls, over which he cried, “What do you think you’re about, the pair of you, breaking the peace of the King’s hall like this?”

“It was him as started it, my lord,” protested one, thickly, through a bloody nose.

“I don’t give a Saxon’s shit which one of you it was started it,” snarled Cai. “Any more of it, and I’ll tie you together by the thumbs and hurl you down the well. Now get out of my sight.”

Thus chastened, the two heroes slunk away into the shadows beyond the hearth-pit, cherishing their bruises. The crowd of their fellows which had gathered to cheer on their respective champions was now left rather lost and abashed in their wake.

“And let that serve as a warning to the rest of you,” he said. “If any more of you get it into your heads to play at gladiators, then by Christ and Camulos together, I’ll hang you by the stones from the rafters myself. Now get out of my sight.”

This raised a sullen murmur from the assembly, but no one felt like arguing the point, nor yet look him in the eye; and by and by, they, too, melted away, while Cai glared after their retreating backs.

“Another one?” asked Bedwyr, appearing at his shoulder with Lucan close behind.

“Aye,” said Cai sourly. “Damn me if I know what’s got into them.”

That was a lie, of course. He knew all too well what had got into them; it was the same thing that had got into them all. In the day since the flight of Launcelot and the Queen, an ill atmosphere had fallen over the court at Caer Leon: a heavy, fraught, restive atmosphere, and like one of those fever-choked winds that came in from the marshes in summer, it had infected every soul in the place. Gawain had hardly waited till the bodies of his brothers were laid out before taking himself off to his own dwelling-place, swearing vengeance with every breath. And now, as his friends and Launcelot’s found themselves at odds, it was as if every man in the warband felt himself bound to take a side. Even the youngsters, from armour-bearer to dog-boy, seemed to feel themselves called upon to make their opinions known.

Perhaps if the King were among them, they might remember themselves better. But Arthur had hardly been seen since the whole bloody business, and in his absence it was as if some crucial restraint had been taken away, leaving the whole body at the mercy of their own confusion and consternation, which as far as he could see, mostly found vent in brawls like the one he had just broken up. Cai had always had the name of being hot-tempered and bloody-minded, but Christ God! all this was making him feel very old and sober indeed.

“Where is the King?” asked Bedwyr.

“Still in his own rooms, as far as I know,” he said, before demanding, “And why not?”

“It is not good,” said Lucan. “These divisions will only grow worse the longer he keeps himself shut away. Nor,” he went on quickly, as Cai opened his mouth to tell him just what he thought of that, “is it good for him.”

“Someone ought to speak with him,” said Bedwyr, levelling a significant look his way.

“Christ,” muttered Cai, “and why me? I haven’t the first notion what to say to him. You’re the one full of kind words and good counsel, Bedwyr, why don’t you do it?”

“Because you are his oldest friend of all,” returned Bedwyr, “his brother in all but blood. There are places you might go where even the rest of us might not be welcome.”

“Please, Cai,” urged Lucan, then added in a low voice, “If one of us does not, you may be sure Medraut will.”

Cai cursed, softly but full of feeling. That was the last thing they needed, right enough. He would be the last one to heap censure on any man for getting a bastard, and it was like Arthur to want to do his best by the lad and give him a place among his own household warriors. But even that did not quite account for the hold that Medraut seemed to have over him, nor for the way that whenever there was mischief within the warband, he always seemed to be there — oh, never at the heart of it, and never in any way you could put your finger on; but there, all the same, hovering somewhere on the fringes, the way a spider sits beady-eyed and watchful on the edge of its web as it waits for the fly to fall into the trap. He was lurking on the edge of this hideous mess; Cai was sure of it, even if he could not say how. The certainty was there, roiling away in his gut. Lucan was right: better by far that someone with Arthur’s true interests at heart speak to him before Medraut had a chance to twist the thing to his own purposes.

“Very well,” he grunted at last, “I will speak with him.”

It was a bright day, full of the promise of summer, but as Cai left the warriors’ hall and crossed the forecourt, it seemed that an obscure pall still hung over the fortress. From the church rose the keening of women and the low, darker chanting of the monks as they offered up prayers and hymns for the souls of Gaheris and Gareth, but all other sound seemed muted and remote. Even the clamour of the forge, which usually pierced through all other noise even on the busiest days, rang hollow and subdued.

The King’s house was what had once been the Roman commander’s dwelling-place, in the days when Caer Leon had been Isca of the Second Legion, four square wings built around a little courtyard. As Cai passed the guards and stooped into the atrium, he was struck by a violent sense of desolation, for it was here that Gwenhwyvar and her ladies were wont to pass the time of day. Now it stood empty, for there was no Queen now, but there were all around little lingering reminders of her. Her loom in the corner, with a half-done cloak still stretched upon it. Her work-table on another, with her tablets and abacus. The garlands of her favourite thorn-blossom upon the household shrine, draped about the painting of Christ and the little stone-graven image of the Three Mothers. Simple, homely tokens, now imbued with a terrible sense of loss. Even the little garlands had begun to crisp and turn brown, their milky perfume faded.

Once within that inward-looking house, all noise outside, subdued though it was, seemed to fall away at once, and Cai’s footsteps sounded intrusively loud to his own ears as he paced down the shadowy old colonnade-walk. When he came to the door he sought, he hesitated a moment or two; then, with an irritable shake of his head, he remembered himself and knocked, hearing the blows of his fist echo hollow in the room beyond.

“Sire,” he called; then, in a lower voice, “Arthur?”

At first there was only silence, and he felt a strange swooping of dread in his belly. But then, low from the other side of the door, came Arthur’s voice: “Cai? Is that you?”

“It is, my lord.”

“Pray come in.”

Cai was ever the first to plunge into the thick of any fight without thinking twice, but somehow he had to steel himself before crossing the threshold into Arthur’s room. He found it in shadow, the shutters closed, with only a few thin slices of afternoon sunlight piercing through the chinks. The brazier smouldered in the corner, throwing off a low red light, and by it lay Cavall, sprawled out in his usual place like an old wolfskin rug. Seeing Cai, he raised his head from between his front paws and thumped his tail, but it was a subdued sort of greeting, and when Cai followed the old dog’s gaze to where Arthur sat, he saw why.

He was sitting on the edge of his bed, his whole body bowed over upon itself. Like Cavall, he had raised his head at Cai’s entrance, but there was a heaviness about it which suggested that a moment ago it, too, had been bowed. His shoulders were stooped, and an air of the most desolate weariness hung about him. Arthur had always been built to narrow lines, but to look at him now, he suddenly seemed very small. Small and old in a way that Cai had never thought him before. 

“Cai,” he said, forcing a smile onto his face. “You come at a fortunate time.” He raised the writing-tablet that had been hanging listlessly between his fingers. “I have this letter from Cador of Dumnonia, but I’m struggling to make myself follow two words together.”

“No wonder at that,” said Cai, and looked hard at him. “Have you slept at all?”

Another hollow smile. “I suppose it would be no use trying to convince you that I have?”

“None,” agreed Cai.

That he had not slept was quite plain from the white, haggard strain of his face, and the shadows that hung, purple as bruises, beneath his eyes. Arthur had always had an open face, a face that could hide nothing of what was in his heart, and what Cai saw there now smote him like a fist in the gut. Pain, sorrow: a dreadful twining of grief and guilt that seemed to have reached deep within him and grasped hold of his very soul.

“How are you?” he asked. As soon as the question left his mouth, he winced at how stupid it sounded. “Hell and death.” _Why_ had he let Bedwyr and Lucan talk him into this? This was something that called for delicacy, one quality no one had ever accused him of possessing. “That was a damn fool question to ask. Forget I said it.”

Arthur just shook his head. “It’s all right. How goes it with the rest of the court?”

He hooked his thumbs in his belt. “Not to deceive you, my lord, the whole place is like a bees’ byke, and no one seems to know their arse from an anthill any more. But we were talking about you, I think. How goes it with you?”

At first he feared Arthur meant to fend him off with some evasion; but even as he opened his mouth, he checked, then gave a great sigh: an awful sound that seemed to have dragged itself up from the very depths of his heart. At last he admitted, “Very ill.” Another sigh, even worse than the first, as he dragged his hands over his bleared eyes. “I have sat up all night, thinking if I could only get some work done, something practical… but I cannot put my mind to it. All I can see is her face, Gwen’s, as they tied her to that stake — oh, God!” Suddenly, he leaned forward, doubled over like a man with the gripes, grasping his head in his hands as if it threatened to split open. “Oh, God, Cai, why did I do it? Why did I agree to such a thing?”

Cavall, roused by his master’s cry, sprang up from his sleeping place and bounded to his side. In the same instant, Cai, likewise struck by the awful strangled note in Arthur’s voice, closed the space between them in one stride and clasped his shoulder.

“There was nothing else you could have done, my lord, once it all came out. It was adultery — adultery and treason.”

“Adultery,” echoed Arthur, with a sudden bitter twist to his mouth. “God save me, there are worse sins than that.”

“Think on the treason, then,” said Cai. 

In truth, he was still quite stunned that Arthur had actually passed such a sentence. Mercy, that had always been his way, the very foundation of his rule. He had always shown mercy to his enemies, and Cai had assumed that for Gwenhwyvar, whom he loved more than his own life, he would have been as gentle as a kitten. But to put her to the stake… An image of Medraut’s pale, watchful eyes flickered unbidden into his mind, and hastily, he put it aside.

In fact, if he were to own the whole truth to himself, he was still bewildered by the whole wretched business, caught between anger and a sort of dismay. He had always liked the Lady Gwenhwyvar. While he served as Arthur’s Praefectus of the Camp, stewarding the fortress and the warriors’ hall, she had the running of the King’s household, and between them they had formed a good accord, such as Cai rarely made with anyone. The truth of her deception had left him feeling oddly betrayed on his own account as well as Arthur’s.

“Stupid woman!” The words burst from him. “What in fury’s name was she thinking? I always thought her one who had a brain in her head, not some fool trollop ruled by her—”

“ _Cai._ ” Arthur’s voice cut across him, low but full of iron. Had it been anyone else, Cai would have gone on, regardless, and added a few more oaths for good measure. But because it was Arthur, he flushed and quickly swallowed back the rest.

“I meant to say,” he muttered, “she should have known better what she was about. Her and that Launcelot. Now _there’s_ one I wish I had here right now. I’d sort him, the fornicating son of a whore. Sort him so he’d not have it in him to please a blind crone, let alone a married woman.”

“Enough, Cai.”

“Oh,” he retorted, as the anger boiled within him anew, “I’m to sit meekly by, then, am I, while the brother of my heart is made a cuckold and a lauging-stock before the whole of Britain? Hell and damnation!” He struck his fist against the wall, causing a few flakes of the old plaster to crumble away. Cavall’s ears went up.

“Cai, please.” Now Arthur’s hand came out and took him by the wrist. “Do not judge them too harshly.”

“Do not judge them?” Cai stared at him, incredulous. But before he could protest any further, Arthur cut in:

“I am not saying I am not hurt by this. God help me, I am hurting. But I think — I think they might be hurting also.”

Cai gave a sceptical grunt.

“As I love them both,” Arthur went on, “so I think — so I am sure that they loved me, despite everything. Do you really think either of them meant to make me a laughing-stock? You, who have known them as long as I have?”

Cai’s first instinct was to deny the very notion and curse both Gwenhwyvar and Launcelot as a pair of cowards and Judases and oath-breakers, everything that was mean and deserving of contempt. But as he looked back into Arthur’s eyes and saw the earnest, almost desperate, appeal in them, he felt his temper cool. Not much, but just enough for him to own that even when his fury had been at its highest pitch, he had never truly believed that Gwenhwyvar and Launcelot could have been laughing up their sleeves at Arthur all this time. There had been too much love there, every way.

Which, somehow, made the whole thing worse.

“They might at least have held off,” he muttered.

“I think they did,” said Arthur quietly, “as long as they could. I think, very likely, the truth only broke now because they only — gave into it lately. It must have been too much for them to deny, in the end.”

This said, he let go of Cai’s arm and fell into weary silence. Cavall, alive as ever to his master’s moods, pressed his muzzle between his knees, looking up at him with great sad eyes and wagging his tail gently. While Arthur fondled the old hound’s ears, lost in his own thoughts, Cai looked down at him, thinking again how small he seemed — diminished, even, as if by the loss of both Gwenhwyvar and Launcelot he had lost something of his own self. There was something, too, in the way he sat, hunched in upon himself… how many times had he come upon Arthur in that selfsame attitude when they were boys, hiding away in some corner of his father’s hall, or among the byres and stables, miserable because he had once again been the target of the other boys’ mockery? Little Arthur the orphan, the bastard, the outsider. Ectorius’ odd little fosterling with his head forever in the clouds. It must have happened countless times.

It was easier in those days, of course. Then, all Cai had to do was find out who Arthur’s tormentor was this time, then go and bloody his nose in return. But this was something that could not be fixed with mere bloody noses. He felt helpless: furiously, wretchedly helpless. He had spent all his life serving Arthur, had sworn his loyalty as brother and liegeman both, and now, when Arthur stood in more need of succour than ever, he was powerless to help.

With a great gusting sigh, he dropped down to sit by Arthur’s side, the bed-ropes protesting beneath his added weight. For some time they sat there in silence, each occupied with his own thoughts. Then, still looking down at Cavall, Arthur said softly, “Please, Cai, do not think ill of them for this. If there is any fault, it is mine.”

“ _Yours?_ ” he burst out, startling Cavall anew. “By the threefold God, Arthur, there is forgiveness, then there is — whatever this is.”

But Arthur just shook his head. “At the heart of it, the sin is mine. I failed them, Gwen especially.”

“Ballocks,” said Cai fiercely. “I never knew a man love a woman more.”

“Of course I love her,” said Arthur, in a dreadful matter-of-course tone. “But I failed her. There was always something there, throwing its shadow between us right from the beginning, and God knows it was none of her doing.”

This Cai heard with a faint chill to the spine. Sometimes, at the most unexpected times, Arthur would come out with something like this, with the same hollow conviction, as if he spoke of something dark and secret within his own soul. But he had never explained it, and Cai had never been able to bring himself to press him on the matter.

“And I am glad that Launcelot saved her when I did not. When I saw the two of them ride out the gates yesterday, I thanked God. They were alive, and they were safe. In that moment, I realised that was more important to me than anything that had gone before. Do you understand?”

No, Cai wanted to shout. It was too unjust, too monstrously unjust, that Arthur, who had laboured all his life to make Britain a land where every other soul could live in peace and security, should be denied a single crumb of happiness of his own.

But in the end, reluctantly, he had to say, “Aye. I think I do.”

Relief flitted across Arthur’s face, before it softened into a smile — tired and shadowy, but true. His hand tightened on Cai’s arm. “Thank you.”

This was more than Cai could bear. “Come here,” he muttered, and put an arm about his shoulders. After years of battles and riding from one end of the land to the other, Arthur could never be called fragile, but in that moment, as he sighed and leaned into Cai’s shoulder, he felt as absurdly small and slight as he had as a boy. In the days that Cai could protect him. He close his arm tighter about him.

“You know,” he said at last, unwilling but knowing it must be done, “that you’ll not be able to sweeten Gawain so easily.”

Arthur gave another heavy sigh. “No. No, of course not. How does he?”

“About ready to spit fire, when I saw him last.”

“I don’t doubt it. There never were brothers as close as those three.”

“None linked by blood, anyway,” said Cai, which won a small smile. “But you can be sure that as soon as Gareth and Gaheris are buried, Gawain will be wanting justice. And,” he added, “he deserves it.”

“Justice,” said Arthur gravely, “or vengeance?”

Cai shrugged. “Maybe the two are not so apart in this case. This is blood feud, Arthur, twice over. That won’t be so easily mended.”

“No,” murmured Arthur, and continued to rub Cavall’s ears without seeming aware of anything he did. There fell a short silence, during which Cai could almost swear he could hear the turning of his thoughts, before he said again, almost too softly for hearing, “There will be no coming back from this.”

The same thought had occurred to Cai. Already the divisions were showing wide and deep, and he was beset by an ill sense of instability, as if the ground beneath his feet had suddenly grown treacherous, as if the foundations of all they had built these past years were beginning to buckle. But he had half-hoped it was only an effect of his own grim humour. To hear the same thing from Arthur, of all people, gave him an unpleasant start.

Arthur turned to him. “Have I been a fool, Cai? Have I just been chasing shadows all this time?”

The bleak simplicity of the question struck him sore. “No, you’re not a fool, Arthur. God’s blood, it’s no fault to be able to see further into a quernstone than other men.”

“I wish that were true,” Arthur replied, and there was that terrible desolation upon him again. “But I cannot see my way through this. I do not know where to go from here.”

Cai’s heart was full to bursting, aching with a whole riot of emotions that he could never hope to put names to. Why was it that the only words that ever came easy to him were the ill-tempered ones?

But he could not, _would not_ , let Arthur believe himself on his own.

“I do not know what will come now,” he said. “Ach! Hell and death, Arthur, you know me. You know what I am. I’m good for fighting and whoring and not much else. But whatever comes, I’m your man. Whatever comes, you will not have to face it alone. I am here.”

And no sooner were the words out of his mouth than he pulled Arthur to him, roughly, clumsily, hugging him as he did not think he had done even when they were children. And Arthur hugged back, tightly, almost desperately. Cavall grumbled, displeased at being left out.

“Cai,” said Arthur, the words muffled in his shoulder, but still intelligible, full of love and gratitude. “Best of all brothers. First of all companions.”

“First and last,” Cai swore. “Until the end.”


End file.
